I was tempted to think that the sunset view from the Meda eminence was the
finest in the immediate neighbourhood of Gafsa. Not so; that from the low
hills behind Sidi Mansur, with the stony ridge of Jebel Assalah at your
back, surpasses it in some respects. Through a gap you look towards the
distant green plantations, with a shimmering level in the foreground; on
your other side lies the Oued Baiesh, crossed by the track to Kairouan,
where strings of camels are for ever moving to and fro, laden with
merchandise from the north or with desert products from the oases of
Djerid and Souf. The dry bed of the torrent glows in hues of isabel and
cream, while its perpendicular mud-banks, on the further side, gleam like
precipices of amber; the soil at your feet is besprinkled with a profusion
of fair and fragile flowerlets.
Here stand, like sentinels at the end of all things living, the three or
four last, lonely palms--they and their fellows lower down are fed by a
silvery streamlet which is forced upwards, I suppose, by contact with
Professor Koken's conglomerate; above and below this oasis-region the
river-bed is generally dry. It must be a wonderful sight, however, when
the place is in flood--a deluge of liquid ooze careering madly southward
towards the dismal Chotts amid the crashing of stones and palm trees and
the collapse of banks. For the Oued Baiesh can be angry at times; in 1859
it submerged fifty hectares of the Gafsa gardens.
Instead of returning by the main road from Sidi Mansur, one can bend a
little to the right and so pass the military hospital, a large
establishment which looks as if it could be converted into a barrack in
case of need. This is as it should be. Gafsa is a rallying-point, and must
be prepared for emergencies. Here, too, lie the cemeteries: the Jewish,
fronting the main road, with a decent enclosure; that of the Christians,
framed in a wire fence and containing a few wooden crosses, imitation
broken columns and tinsel wreaths; Arab tombs, scattered over a large
undefined tract of brown earth, and clustering thickly about some
white-domed maraboutic monument, whose saintly relics are desirable
companionship for the humbler dead.
The bare ground here is littered with pottery and other fragments of
ancient life testifying to its former populousness: flint implements,
among the rest. Of the interval between the latest of these stone-age
primevals and the first Egyptian invasion of Gafsa we know nothing; they,
the Egyptians, brought with them that plough which is figured in the
hieroglyphics, and has not yet changed its shape. You may see the
venerable instrument any day you like, being carried on a man's back to
his work in the oasis.
Athwart this region there runs an underground (excavated) stream of water,
led from Sidi Mansur to nourish the Gafsa plantations. Through holes in
the ground one looks down upon the element flowing mysteriously below;
figs and other trees are set in these hollows for the sake of the shade
and moisture, and their crowns barely reach the level of the soil. This is
no place to wander about at night--a false step in the darkness and a man
would break his neck. There was talk, at one time, of leading this brook,
which is sweet and non-mineral, into Gafsa for drinking purposes, but the
native garden proprietors raised their inevitable howl of objections, and
the project was abandoned.
If you ask a local white man as to the misdeeds of his administration, be
sure he will mention the affair of the railway station which was built too
far from the town, and this of the Sidi Mansur water. And who, you ask,
was to blame for these follies? Oh, the _controlleur_, as usual; always
the _controlleur!_ It is no sinecure being an official of this kind in
Tunisia, with precise Government instructions in one pocket, and in the
other his countrymen's contrary lamentations and suggestions, often
reasonable enough....
Loaded down with a choice selection of Sidi Mansur flints, which are
singular as having a white patina, I returned to Gafsa in the late
afternoon and entered my favourite Arab café. Here, at all events, if you
do not mind a little native _esprit de corps_, you will be able to thaw
your frozen limbs; all the other rooms of Gafsa, public and private, are
like ice-cellars. There are many of these coffeehouses in the town, and
this is one of the least fashionable of them. Never a European darkens its
door; seldom even a native soldier; it is not good enough for them; they
go to finer resorts.
At its entrance there lie, conveniently arranged as seats, some old Roman
blocks, overshadowed by a mulberry, now gaunt and bare. It must be
delightful, in the spring-time, to sit under its shade and watch the
street-life: the operations at the neighbouring dye-shop where gaudy
cloths of blue and red are hanging out to dry, or, lower down, the
movement at the wood-market--a large tract of "boulevard" encumbered with
the impedimenta of nomadism. There is a ceaseless unloading of fuel here;
bargains are struck about sheep and goats, the hapless quadruped, that
refuses to accompany its new purchaser good-naturedly, being lifted up by
the hind legs and made to walk in undignified fashion on the remaining
two. Fires gleam brightly, each one surrounded by a knot of camels couched
in the dust, their noses converging towards the flame, while old desert
hags, bent double with a life of hardship, bustle about the cooking-pots.
There are brawls, too--Arabs seizing each other by the throat, raising
sticks and uttering wild imprecations....
[ILLUSTRATION: Café by the Mulberry Tree]
But within that windowless chamber, all is peace. Eternal twilight reigns,
and your eyes must become accustomed to the gloom ere you can perceive the
cobwebby ceiling of palm-rafters, smoke-begrimed and upheld by two stone
columns that glisten with the dirt of ages. Here is the hearth, overhung
by a few ancient pots, where the server, his head enveloped in a greasy
towel, officiates like some high priest at the altar. You may have milk,
or the mixture known as coffee, or tea flavoured in Moroccan style with
mint, or with cinnamon, or pepper. The water-vessels stew everlastingly
upon a slow fire fed with the residue of pressed olives. Or, if too poor,
you may take a drink of water out of the large clay tub that stands by the
door. Often a beggar will step within for that purpose, and then the
chubby serving-lad gives a scowl of displeasure and makes pretence to take
away the cup; but the mendicant will not be gainsaid--water is the gift of
Allah! And, if so please you, you may drink nothing at all, but simply
converse with your neighbour, or sit still and dream away the days, the
weeks, the year, sleeping by night upon the floor.
A few of the customers are playing at cards or sedately chatting; others
begin to prepare their favourite smoke of hashish. A board is called for
and the hashish-powder spread out upon it. The operator chops it into
still finer particles by means of a semicircular blade, deftly blowing
away the dust--this brings out its strength. He is in no hurry; it is a
ceremony rather than a task. Slowly he separates the coarser from the
finer grains, his fingers moving with loving deliberation over the smooth
board. Then the cutting process is repeated once more, and yet again.
Maybe he will now add a little of the Soufi stuff, to improve the taste.
At last all is ready, and small pipes are extracted from the folds of the
burnous and filled with half a thimbleful of the precious mixture. Two or
three whiffs, deeply inhaled, stream out at mouth and nostrils; then the
pipe is swiftly passed on to a friend, who drains the last drop of smoke
and knocks out the ashes. Not a word is spoken.
Hand him your pipe, if you are wise, and let him fill it for you. This
_kif_, they say, affects people differently; but I think that, as a
general effect, you will discover a genial warmth stealing through your
limbs, while the things of this world begin to reveal themselves in a more
spiritual perspective.
I thought of the sunset this afternoon, as viewed from Sidi Mansur. They
are fine, these moments of conflagration, of mineral incandescence, when
the sober limestone rocks take on the tints of molten copper, their
convulsed strata standing out like the ribs of some agonized Prometheus,
while the plain, where every little stone casts an inordinate shadow
behind it, clothes itself in demure shades of pearl. Fine, and all too
brief. For even before the descending sun has touched the rim of the world
the colours fade away; only overhead the play of blues and greens
continues--freezing, at last, to pale indigo. Fine, but somewhat trite; a
well-worn subject, these Oriental sunsets. Yet the man who can revel in
such displays with a whole heart is to be envied of a talisman against
many ills. I can conceive the subtlest and profoundest sage desiring
nothing better than to retain, ever undiminished, a childlike capacity for
these simple pleasures....
A spirit of immemorial eld pervades this tavern. Silently the shrouded
figures come and go. They have lighted the lamp yonder, and it glimmers
through the haze like some distant star.
And I remembered London at this sunset hour, a medley of tender
grey-in-grey, save where a glory of many-coloured light hovers about some
street-lantern, or where a carriage, splashing through the river of mud,
leaves a momentary track of silver in its rear. There are the nights, of
course, with their bustle and flare, but nights in a city are apt to grow
wearisome; they fall into two or three categories, whose novelty soon
wears off. How different from the starlit ones of the south, each with its
peculiar moods and aspirations!
Yet the Thames--odd how one's _kif_-reveries always lead to running
water--the Thames, I know, will atone for much. It is even more impressive
at this season than in its summer clarity, and as I walk, in imagination,
along that rolling flood flecked with patches of unwholesome iridescence
and crossed by steamers and barges that steer in ghostly fashion about the
dusky waters, I marvel that so few of our poets have responded to its
beauty and signification. They find it easier, doubtless, to warble a
spring song or two. The fierce pulsations of industry, the shiftings of
gold that make and mar human happiness--these are themes reserved for the
bard of the future who shall strike, bravely, a new chord, extracting from
the sombre facts of city life a throbbing, many-tinted romance, even as
out of that foul coal-tar some, who know the secret, craftily distil most
delicate perfumes and colours exquisite. The bard of the future ... h'm!
Will he ever appear? As an atavism, perhaps. Take away from modern poetry
what appeals to primitive man--the jingle and pathetic fallacy--and the
residue, if any, would be better expressed in prose.
My neighbour, a sensible person, has ceased to take interest in the
proceedings. Perched upright at first, his head drooping within the folds
of his cloak, he has slowly succumbed; he has kicked off his sandals,
stretched himself out, and now slumbers. I, too, am beginning to feel
weary, and no wonder....
Primitive man with those flints of his, that weigh me down at this moment.
This stone-collecting, _par exemple!_ I wonder what induced me to take up
such a hobby. The German Professor, as usual. Ah, Mr. Koken, Mr.
Koken--those light words of yours have borne a heavy fruit. I possess four
hundred implements now, and they will double the weight of my luggage and
ruin my starched shirts, especially those formidable "præchellean"
skull-cleavers. And I know exactly what the customs officer at Marseilles
will say, when he peeps into my bag:
"_Tiens, des cailloux! Monsieur est botaniste?"_
And then a crowd of people will assemble, to whom I must explain
everything, with the result of being arrested for smuggling forbidden
mining samples out of a colony and ending my days in some insanitary
French prison.
_Chapter VI_
_AMUSEMENTS BY THE WAY_
Meanwhile, to satiate myself with Gafsa impressions, I linger by the
margin of the pool that lies below the fortress. Hither the camels are
driven to slake their thirst, arriving sometimes in such crowds as almost
to fill up the place. Donkeys and horses are scoured by half-naked lads;
in the clearer parts, a number of tattooed Bedouin girls are everlastingly
washing their household stuffs. Only on rare occasions is the liquid
undisturbed, and then it shines with the steely-blue transparency of those
diamonds that are a class by themselves, superior to "first-water" stones.
At the slightest agitation all the accumulated ooze and filth of
generations--rags and decomposing frogs and things unmentionable--rise to
the surface in turbid clouds. The element wells out hot, from under the
neighbouring Kasbah, with a pestiferous mineral aroma.
Hither comes, at fixed intervals, my friend Silenus, the water-carrier, on
his philosophic donkey; nearly all Gafsa draws its supply of cooking and
drinking water from this fetid and malodorous mere.
A fine example of French inefficiency, this "abreuvoir." Two hundred
francs would suffice to tap the liquid a few yards higher up, by means of
a common cast-iron pipe, whence it would rush out, pure and undefiled, to
fill in a few moments those multitudinous water-skins that are now
laboriously furnished, by hand, out of the often tainted pool below.
And of native inefficiency, likewise. Day after day, age after age, have
these women done their laundry-work at this spot, and yet their clothing,
for purposes of the work, is more hopelessly inadequate than the burnous
of the males. They will arrive wrapped up in twenty rags that are always
falling off their backs and shoulders (they possess no baskets). One by
one these articles are removed, soaped with one little hand, stamped upon
by two little feet, and laid aside. Nothing remains, at last, but a single
covering garment--a loose chemise full of artistic possibilities for the
onlookers. It gives the poor girls endless trouble, for it is continually
slipping off their bodies on one side or the other, and one hand is
engaged, all the time, in counteracting these mischievous movements.
Standing as they do up to their knees in the water, it is tucked up high
and of course tumbles down again every minute. At the end of their washing
they are as wet as drenched poodles.
[ILLUSTRATION: My Friend Silenus]
No harm in this, in summer-time; but with the thermometer below
freezing-point they would suffer considerably were they not inured, like
to other creatures of the desert, to every kind of discomfort.
The chief mental exercise of the Arab, they say, consists in thinking how
to reduce his work to a minimum. Now this being precisely my own ideal of
life, and a most rational one, I would prefer to put it thus: that of many
kinds of simplification they practise only one--_omission_, which does not
always pay. They are imaginative, but incredibly uninventive. How
different from the wily Hindu or Chinaman, with his almost preternatural
sagacity in small practical matters! Scorn of theories is one of their
chief race-characteristics, and that is why they end in becoming
stoics--stoics, that is, as the beasts are, who suffer without knowing
why.
There was one of these girls in particular whom I noticed every day, and
whom, at last, I compassionately supplied with a couple of safety-pins,
after explaining their uses. She was decidedly ugly. But sometimes you may
see others here, with neatly chiselled limbs and elfish eyes of a sultry,
troubling charm into which, if sentimentally disposed, you can read an
ocean of love; these need not be supplied with safety-pins. An
enthusiastic Frenchman at Gabes actually married one of these sphynx-like
creatures--a hazardous and quixotic experiment. As brides for a lifetime
(slaves) they cost from a hundred to six hundred francs apiece, and even
more; and you will do well to _abonner_ yourself with the family
beforehand, in order to be sure of obtaining a sound article, as with the
Tartar girls in Russian Asia and elsewhere. As a general rule, those of
the semi-nomads--the Gourbi people--cost more than those of the true
wanderers. The price varies according to the season and a thousand other
contingencies; it rises, inevitably, in the neighbourhood of settled
places, where employment of one kind (olive-picking, etc.) or
another--chiefly of another--can be found for them.
One of the prettiest I ever saw was offered me for three hundred francs.
It was an uncommon bargain, due to a drought and certain family mishaps.
These little wildlings are troublesome to carry about. They are less
nimble and amiable than the boys, and often require more beating than a
European has time to give them. You can always sell them again, of course;
and sometimes (into the towns) at a good profit.
The Arab woman is the repository of all the accumulated nonsense of the
race, and her influence upon the young brood is retrogressive and malign.
It matters little what happens in the desert where men and women are
necessarily animals, but it does among the middle and upper native classes
of the larger places. Here the French have established their so-called
Arab-French schools, excellent institutions which are largely attended,
and would produce far better results but for the halo of sanctity with
which boys in every country--but particularly in half-civilized ones--are
apt to invest the most flagrantly empty-headed of mothers. In Tunisia, as
soon as the youngsters return home, these women quickly undo all the good
work, by teaching them that what they have learnt at school is dangerous
untruth, and that the Koran and native mode of life are the only sources
of happiness. Then, to keep the son at home, the mother will hasten to
catch a bride for him who shall be, if possible, more incompetent than
herself, in order that she, the mother, may retain her ascendency over
him. The father, meanwhile, shrugs his shoulders: _Mektoub_! There is no
fighting against such heroic perseverance on a woman's part; besides, was
he not brought up on the same lines?
The mischief is done, for Arabs relapse easily; even native officers, who
have served for years in the French army, will, on returning home, don the
burnous, sit at street corners, and become more _arabized_ than ever. So
it comes about that, if the eyes of the former generation were entirely
averse from French rule, the present one is Janus-faced--looking both
ways. Some day, presumably, there will be a further adaptation, and their
eyes, like those of certain flat-fish, will wander round and settle down
definitely on the right side....
This is a favourite month for native weddings. There was one going on last
night. I looked into the courtyard of a ruinous building which was crammed
with spectators. The Aissouyiahs were performing, in honour of the
occasion.
These are the dervish fanatics whom everyone knows. They eat scorpions,
glass, nails, and burning coals; they cut themselves with knives and other
instruments--impostors, for the most part.
It is mere child's play to what you can see further East.
Yet, with the starry night overhead, and the flare of torches lighting up
a seething mass of faces below, of bronzed limbs and bright-tinted rags
dangling at every altitude from the palm rafters and decayed stairway, the
scene was more weirdly fascinating than as one generally sees it--in
mosques or in the open daylight. There were wild strains of music and
song; a wave of disquietude, clearly, was passing over the beholders.
These performances, at such a time, may originally have taken place for
purposes of nuptial excitement or stimulation; but it requires rather an
exotic mentality to be stimulated, otherwise than unpleasantly, by the
spectacle of little boys writhing on the ground in simulated agony with a
long iron skewer thrust through their cheeks. They catch them young; and
these scholars, or aspirants, are indubitably frauds and often worse than
frauds. Mixed with them are a certain proportion of unbalanced, half-crazy
individuals, who really work themselves into a frenzy and give the
semblance of veracity to the entertainment. A judge of native physiognomy
can generally tell the two types apart. There are also a few sensible
men--butchers, porters, and the like--who do not mind a little pain for
the sake of the profit.
For the rest, the ceaseless mandarin-like head-wagglings and mutterings of
the names of Allah would stupefy anyone's brain up to a point. It is not
only Arabs who daze their understandings with godly ejaculations, oft
repeated. The marabout leader, who is a kind of _maître de ballet_,
enfolds each performer in his arms and makes a few passes round him, or
kisses him. The uninitiated then reel off in a trance of hypnotic joy; the
others do the same, in more theatrical fashion. At the end of each one's
trick he de-mesmerizes him once more, and perhaps touches the wound with
his hands. He passes the skewer or sword between his lips as a
disinfectant--a wise precaution.
These lacerations heal quickly. I have spoken to men labouring in the
fields on the day following such excesses, and found them ready to "work"
again the same evening.
It ended up with a beast-dance--two fine negroes, all but naked, depicting
the amorous rages of panthers or some other cat-like feral. This was
really good, of its kind; and if, as regards the earlier part of the
programme, it was still difficult to tell where religion ended and
sensuality began (it sometimes is), there was no doubt about the last
item, which was purely sadistic. Soon there issued the familiar trillings
from the balcony, and the firing-off of guns, to announce that the drama
was terminated.
It is we shrinkingly æsthetic creatures who conjure up by a mere effort of
the imagination what these blunt folks cannot conceive without gross
visual stimulants. That is because they have not enjoyed our advantages;
they are not civilized. Among other things, they have not gone through a
"reformation." Take a northern stock, sound in mind and body; infuse into
it a perverse disrespect for the human frame and other anti-rational
whimsies; muddle the whole, once more, by a condiment of Hellenistic
renaissance and add, as crowning flavour, puritan "conscience" and
"sinfulness"--mix up, in a general way, good nourishment with ascetic
principles--and you will attain to a capacity of luxuriance in certain
matters that may well be the envy and despair of poor primitives like the
Arabs.
Extremes meet. Performances such as these are beyond good and evil. They
are for the wholly savage or the wholly civilized. We complain
considerably just now of the swamping of class distinctions in our lands,
but a man of culture has a prerogative to which the biliously moral middle
classes can never aspire: to be an Arab, when it suits him.
_Chapter VII_
_AT THE CAFÉ_
Whether it be due to the incessant cold and dry winds, that parch the more
genial humours, or to some other cause, there is certainly a tone of
exacerbation, at this moment, among the European residents at Gafsa. I
noticed it very clearly yesterday evening in the little French café--a
soul-withering resort, furnished with a few cast-iron tables and
uncomfortable chairs that repose on a flooring of chill cement
tiles--where, in sheer desperation, two or three of us, muffled up to our
ears, congregate before dinner to exchange gossip and imbibe the
pre-prandial absinthe.
I announced my intention of leaving shortly for Tozeur.